Worldcrunch
SÂO PAULO — The Chinese government is already making its first plans to celebrate the centenary of two momentous events in the country’s history. Seven years from now, in 2021, the nation will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Then in 2049, the country will celebrate the creation […]
How does it twirl? Why does it loop? An American cowboy might take it all for granted. But a French team has explored how the laws of physics can explain this common thread.
CORDOBA — Back in 1984, UNESCO included Spain’s Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba on its World Heritage list. Thirty years later, the site that tourist guides describe as one of Andalusia’s architectural masterpieces — a symbol of the golden age of the Umayyad civilization and of the “concord” between religions — now represents conflict. Though the exceptional […]
QUINGGOU — It was back in the mid-1990s, amid China’s major economic reforms. Liu Changxia and other men in the village of Qinggou felt it was “time to leave home” because the farm wasn‘t bringing in enough and their families needed to be provided for. The whole country was talking of nothing but economic growth. […]
As President Obama arrives on an Asian tour, yet another sign that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to undo Japan’s pacifist policies that are a vestige of World War II.
As the risk of war hovers over the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, one local explains why he looks to Moscow rather than Kiev.
Long hailed as the future of chess, the Norwegian-born grand master is now, at the ripe age of 23, the reigning world champion. The next question: will he be the greatest of all time?
TORA — It’s 10 a.m. and the contours of Tora Prison, south of Cairo, are filling with families arriving on time to visit relatives. Old Peugeot 504s are offloading passengers whose faces are marked by the fatigue of the trip. The scene feels like an invisible face of Cairo. Vendors selling oranges and mandarins are part of the prison economy, with families stopping and buying some on their way into the prison complex. A girl who looks about 10 years old is carrying a colossal tray of kanafeh pastries on her head. Her little brother is carrying a bag of […]
KIGALI — The shocking thought is said out loud, and repeated. “I can only be relieved when I kill my father.” The 19-year-old who calls himself DG seethes with rage when talking about his father. “He’s a coward, a torturer who doesn’t deserve anything but death,” he insists. The truth about his conception, birth and […]
Behavior psychology, first introduced in the U.S. during the 1960s, is now a widely accepted part of criminal investigation tactics. A French special unit handles some 40 extreme cases a year.
As the world’s largest democracy goes to the polls for national elections, a closer look at India’s struggle to improve its schools through privatization. Even for the poor.
-Op-Ed- SAO PAULO — Brazil’s military rule, which began 50 years ago with the coup on April 1, 1964, and lasted until 1985, has since been the target of well-deserved and widely-shared aversion. The solid establishment of a modern democracy over the last three decades helped shine a light on all that was wrong with […]
KIGALI — In the courtyard of the Ecoplastic factory in the Rwandan capital, a group of men and women are hanging plastic bags on a line with clothes pins, like they would do to dry a load of wash. “People pick them here and there and bring them to us. We buy them and process […]
Employees who toil long hours for low wages at the Chinese factories that assemble the iPhone are part of the dark side of the country’s rush to urbanization.
Protecting the ‘green lung’ of the sprawling, wheezing metropolis is becoming increasingly harder in the face of surging population and hungry real estate developers.
BADEN-BADEN — There is no fur in sight here — no wraps, mink collars, not even real-fur trim on a hood at Baden-Baden’s casino. Granted, this is not ideal fur weather, as the Sparkasse Bank thermometer reads 22° Celsius. But for rich Russians, it is still very much the winter travel season, and one wonders […]
Weeks before Marquez’s death at 87, the Bogota daily wrote how the legendary novelist was followed right until the end by the ghosts of his strongest character: his mother.
Extraordinary Russian wealth has accumulated in London, much of it of questionable origins. Inevitably, it will be factored into British decisions in the showdown with Vladimir Putin.
KIGALI — As the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide approaches, a “flame of hope” is being carried across the entire country, a symbol of reconciliation and faith in a better future. “I want to make sure that everything’s in order,” says the president of the Tutsi genocide survivors group in northern Rwanda. “The flame […]
NEW DELHI — As India’s national elections approach, the country’s middle class is the center of attention. Analysts cite it as the decisive demographic in the vote slated next month. It is true that the electoral weight of the middle class hasn’t stopped growing: according to the Asian Development Bank, the Indian middle class rose […]
Complicated…and crucial to resolving the current showdown between Russia and the West.
PARIS — Will Syrians pay for the Ukrainians? Will the millions of victims of a protracted and bloody conflict in Syria suffer the backlashes of the situation playing out in Ukraine? Sadly, the answer is yes. Posed in these simplistic terms, the question might seem odd. But in reality, the growing hostility between Moscow and […]
JOAL — On the beach here in Joal, a large fishing harbor south of Senegal’s capital of Dakar, a group of women watch as fishermen unload their catch from their motor boats. It wasn’t such a good day. But empty nets are not the only disappointment here. A Russian factory that will transform fresh fish […]
The American-invented dream of averting the finality of death by freezing one’s body is a world unto its own. Now it’s spreading to the UK, France and beyond.
While much of the West has seen the danger in abusing psychoactive drugs such as Valium, sales of these drugs in Brazil are skyrocketing, and doctors warn that it’s out of control.
PARIS — Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, on the verge of collapse, has ruined the hopes carried by the policies of the far left. Vladimir Putin’s Russia will make a similar demonstration of inanity with those across the political spectrum — those of the far-right, or if you prefer, of extreme nationalism. The two elected dictators have […]
A year after the death of President Hugo Chávez, food and consumer shortages are spreading through Caracas along with protests. Blame over-regulation or capitalistic hoarding?
In search of comedy in a complicated country, Youssef is back on the air.
As Chinese Premier Li Keqiang rolled out the country’s new ‘war on pollution,’ Le Monde paid a visit to the city that has registered the dirtiest air in China.
The competing sides, both globally and regionally, will never see Ukraine’s reality the same way, so deep are the historical and cultural divides. Analysis from Kiev.
From Kiev to Caracas, what people are saying as the news turns…
In Eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border, the scene – and sentiments – and not exactly like those in Kiev.
For the Greek philosopher Diogenes, self-control and self-sufficiency were the essential values. He lived a life with no possessions, except for a cloak, a purse and a barrel made out of clay in which he would sleep. Intrigued, the emperor Alexander The Great went to visit him. “I’m the most powerful man in the world. […]
SIALKOT — Mohammad Idrees walks slowly, with the help of his crutches, to the factory where he works in Sialkot, Pakistan. The 35-year-old has been stitching soccer balls here for more than 17 years, earning $3 a day to support his wife and six children. “I don’t have any other skills to earn a living, so I would have ended up roaming around the city or begging on the street if it wasn’t for the football factory in our village,” Idrees says as he sits on a low chair with some 30 other workers inside the factory. “I work for […]
-OpEd- The Western world felt safe in the illusion that nothing would happen in Ukraine until the end of the Sochi Olympic Games. But it woke up on Wednesday to terrifying images of the bloody battlefield of central Kiev, literally ablaze. After a three-month-long face-off between a pro-European opposition, which hasn’t weakened despite the cold […]
Demographically and economically, Africa is well poised for success. But it needs to find new forms of growth and governance – and an end to bloody conflict – to realize its potential.
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